(no subject)

[damselfish]

Friday, a friend pointed me toward a lesbian steampunk anthology looking for submissions. "Haha, by March 30th? I'll never get anything done." "...You write 2k words a day." "Eh." "Steampunk! Lesbians! You could write about mermaids, it'd be like the Nautilus but with more lesbians!" "Eh, that sounds cool, but I'm just not really enthused for anything and mermaids in steampunk? Steampunk has a hard enough time fitting steam or punk in with all the pointless frippery."

Yesterday, I had 6,000 words of the tale of a lady submariner on the run from the Americans.

"Oh. Wow. That was nice," I thought to myself, sure that it wouldn't be what anyone was looking for, certainly not for an anthology, but it was exactly what I wanted out of a story-- banter and machines! MACHIIIINES. I have never outgrown my love of vehicles, I was that kid who played with train sets and rode on the elevated metro trains and sat with my grandfather on the shoulder of the highway outside MIA to watch planes take off because that is just too cool (I have no idea why my grandfather indulged my many bizarre interests, bless that man). I still love riding on and in machines. I still fantasize about sitting in a jet fighter cockpit and going ZOOM.

I thought it was a kickass story with kickass characters and I want to hug the particular conceit forever, but I am a very particular sort of audience and I understand that. Anyway, it's much too wonderful to me to send away just anywhere, because even if the world doesn't like it, I adore it. I sent it to a couple friends, and I was simply bulldozed by the response: "I want to scoop this up with some of the Adrienne Rich that I don't hate (there isn't a lot, but there is some) and keep it in a tiny box in my heart," essentially. I have never been so praised for a story before-- this friend (one of my harshest editors) was giving me a play-by-play where she was actually on the edge of her seat and flailing at me about what would happen next. Do they die!? Are they caught!? Oh please say it has a happy ending! She said it was the best short story I've ever written. Everyone else was similarly effusive with praise. There was tension! I have never done tension before!

So now I figure I'll try and get it into the anthology that prompted me to write it. No big, right?

Oh my God queries are hard. Queries are way more terrifying than actually writing the story because everything is either too rambling or doesn't talk about why I am/my story is awesome. Because I am and it is.